Lotro: At least get us to Mt Doom first

Among all the grim news happening lately in and out of gaming, there are now more layoffs at Turbine, affecting the Lotro development team and the studio as a whole. What does it mean for Lotro? Hell I don’t know. But let’s look at WB’s PR statement for an explanation.

Firstly, the layoffs are part of a transition into a F2P mobile development studio. Assuming it means F2p mobile game development, who the fuck at Warner Brothers thought this was a good idea? Remember your last free to play moba? How did that turn out? And the audacity to announce that you think, just think you might get Turbine to compete with other free to play mobile games coming out of China, making millions of dollars, which are now breaking into the States and other countries? WB have other game studios that have produced well known IP mobile games in the past. Collectively, the downloads are impressive but its revenue stream is nowhere near close to being a success. You can’t place Turbine among bigger and even smaller, indie studios in the mobile gaming world that have established themselves for years. Even with WB ‘s backing as named publisher, it’ll never work if the game is good/mediocre to shit. It has to be a damn-near perfect game for it to even have a chance. It’s a completely new ball game and do Turbine even have the experience on their CV for mobile game development? You’re butchering the damn studio WB. In a few years from now, if whatever project from Turbine turns out to be an iOS/Google Play best selling app, I will eat my frigging words. I just can’t see this going anywhere but south. And it better not be a LOTR themed mobile game – the Hobbit one is a shitty cash grab – cause you’re literally slapping us players in the face.

Secondly, the quote “Lotro and DDO will continue to operate as they do now”. Yes, but for a how long? I really hate bringing this topic up, but we know the licence expires next year. Is that the realistic timeline then? If this is to be confirmed, then I hope to god the epic story takes us to Mount Doom by then, and us players can at least get some closure from this epic journey that spanned damned near a decade. To Lotro players, I say keep doing what you’re doing. Keep raiding, keep CJing in pvmp, keep the events and music going, and throw pie parties like there’s no tomorrow. We see news like these all the time that we’re so fed up and desensitized. If it ends, it ends. We’ll just bloody play till the lights go out.

This really isn’t a doomsday fear mongering post. This is a highlight reel of WB’s stupidity and the final confirmation that they have no idea what the fuck they’re doing with Turbine, or how to turn a game dev studio around, to support and drive one of the most sought after IP’s in the world. Shame.